The 7 Most Bizarre Rock Star Deaths

What other area of culture can support such a blasé attitude toward mortality? Disciples of sport and the movies develop a dewy-eyed respect when recalling the untimely demises of their idols, and even the cynical world of comedy maintains a dignified air when confronted by such an event. Nope, it's the domain we call rock 'n' roll that spawns inhabitants hoping to die before they get old, behind them a tribe of followers positively gloating in their heroes' excesses, even if this results in the ultimate sacrifice - and a house residency at the eternal nightclub.

So, don't you go blaming the storyteller. If legendary DJ Alan Freed is going to tell us to "live fast, die young and have a good looking corpse," then expect us to come along for the ride - or, at least, watch open-mouthed from the sidewalk as the casualties rack up. However, it's not always fast-living that accounts for fast-dying - sometimes, even the most mundane events in the rock star's diary can prove to be his - or her - final entry.

He was the bongo boy who bailed before UK glamsters T Rex munched all in their path during 1971 – but this was the lesser of two major errors of judgement in Steve Peregrin Took’s short life. Took fancied himself as a serious musician and had split from Marc Bolan’s band before major success arrived with hits like ‘Get It On (Bang a Gong)’ – however, after the front man’s untimely death in 1977, Took was nonetheless entitled to royalties from the group’s steadily-shifting back catalogue. By the time those readies arrived, he was set to party like it was, well, 1980. A combination of mushrooms and morphine having dulled his senses, the musician then chose to snack on cherries… fatally choking on a rogue pit as he did so. The obvious moral here? If you’re getting stoned, then do make sure your cherries are too.

Robert Higginbotham was the blues/R&B pianist who, as Tommy Tucker, set about claiming a minor footnote in music history during 1964. The Billboard smash ‘Hi-Heel Sneakers’ briefly presented Tucker with the fame he craved, but the failure of further 45s saw him wind up as a real-estate salesman in New Jersey. "Flooring needs attention" might have been the observation of his own home – a property that, sadly, was to return to the market sooner than Tucker might’ve anticipated. The former singer died suddenly in January 1982, having suffered carbon-tetrachloric poisoning, the result of inhaling noxious fumes from the wood floor varnish he’d been using. Sources close to Tucker were instead quick to cite "food poisoning" – perhaps in a last-ditch attempt to offset all those "perfect finish" headlines.

As unassuming as her For Your Consideration album title might suggest, talented singer/songwriter Taylor Mitchell had by 2009 earned a Canadian Folk Music Award and was on the verge of a major-league breakthrough when fate – and a pack of wild dogs – stopped her in her path. Taylor was in the middle of a key tour of the Maritimes when she decided to break from rehearsal and take a hike in the Cape Breton Highlands National Park, Nova Scotia – an apparently innocent detour that was to cost the singer her life. As she walked, the musician was set upon by three coyote hybrids: despite a group of hikers scaring the rabid creatures away, Mitchell passed away overnight in hospital from her injuries, making her the first adult to die from such an attack in recorded history. Mitchell is also the first prominent musician killed by an animal since Bloodstone singer/drummer Roger Durham was thrown by an untrained horse in 1973 – unless you count country guitarist Wayne Chapman, who in 2007 fell from a rooftop trying to escape a swarm of angry hornets.

Okay, Monsieur Stickler – it ain’t rock ‘n’ roll per se, but with this eye-roller of a demise, singer Claude François gives us little choice other than to include him in our countdown to oblivion. François was a trad French crooner whose 1967 composition ‘Comme d’Habitude’ had been re-worked to become Frank Sinatra’s enormo-hit ‘My Way’ – thus buying the chanteur massive music-biz kudos and a very nice line in motors and haircuts. Sadly, he chose not to invest his considerable wealth in either reliable lighting for his bathroom, or indeed basic lessons in electrical safety. In 1978 – just hours before a live appearance in his homeland – François met his destiny attempting to replace a lightbulb... while standing in several inches of bath water. Let’s just say that he completed the circuit ahead of schedule that night.

It’s perhaps in poor taste to mention "Electric Light" at this juncture, but if you hastily chuck in "Orchestra" then you’ve a multi-platinum act whose winning blend of classical, rock and disco illuminated the hit parades of Britain and America during the 1970s. Right in the mix was cellist Mike Edwards, a gifted musician whose goofy antics included manically playing his instrument with a variety of citrus fruit until the whole lot exploded on stage before ELO’s adoring, if somewhat bewildered and juice-drenched fans. Edwards had long-since retired from Jeff Lynne’s band by the time he met his freakish end – beneath a giant, rollaway bale of hay that, at some six tonnes, crushed the cellist in his car as he drove through the west England countryside.

One way or another, the good Lord was gonna git his man on the night of 23 October 1985. Noted slide-guitarist Merle Watson had played with his country-pickin’ dad since the age of fifteen, the Watsons securing four Grammys for their albums of folk-tinged blues. None of this went to Watson Jr’s head, though, the young musician maintaining his uncomplicated North Carolina lifestyle – which, by the mid-eighties, included carpentry by night. On such an occasion, Watson was severely gashed by a vast splinter that spun off his bandsaw, the injury so serious that he raced, by tractor, to the next house to have a tourniquet applied. A neighbor with the ominous name of J. Hendrix tended to his pal, before Watson – adamant that he could make it back – raced off again. The guitarist hadn’t however vouched for his dodgy vehicle. As he approached home, Watson’s brakes froze, the tractor sliding into a ditch before throwing him out. And then landing on top of him, killing him instantly.

Who’d get the vote for the most outré behaviour in hard rock? Mötley Crüe? Nope. Ozzy perhaps? Forget it. These guys are mere wusses when held up against the purveyors of Norwegian black metal, a scene that has "boasted" genuine satanic worship – and real deaths. Pelle Ohlin – aka, "Dead," leader of figureheads Mayhem – prepared for performances by inhaling from a bag containing a deceased raven, his band also known to hurl bloodied pigs’ heads at their audience. Strangely, none of this seemed to make Ohlin happy. The clinically-depressed singer committed suicide by gunshot in 1991, an act that would normally devastate a band. Not so, Mayhem. Guitarist Euronymous, on discovering Ohlin, took photos of his corpse: the remainder of the band then reportedly added some of the dead singer’s brain matter to a ragout completed with paprika and vegetables, later fashioning fragments of Ohlin’s skull into necklaces sent as ‘trophies’ to rival black-metal artists. Only then did the group decide to contact the authorities. (For Euronymous, it all came to a head two years on: he was stabbed to death on his own doorstep by rival musician Count Grishnackh.)